Most of us have heard the tune La donna e mobile whether in its original form in Verdi's "Rigoletto" or on some cheesy greatest Italian hits LP from the 1960s, perhaps alongside "Finiculi/Finicula." Same goes for the electrifying arias sung by Mozart's Queen of the Night, that priestess of high notes.

But how many have re-imagined them as 70s arena rock?

To singer Tyley Ross and arranger Peter Kiesewalter, founders of the East Village Opera Company, it's a no-brainer. Over the past few years, they have been part of a small but growing trend, taking classic opera and reinventing the very music itself, along with the staging.

"I didn't think there'd be anybody listening when we started this, but we seem to have a following among arts nerds, stodgy classical fans and everything in between," Ross says. "And I say that with great respect for both art nerds and stodgy types. We are such a musical oddball that there is no one magazine or website that captures our audience, which seems to be anybody adventurous enough to listen."

The result: East Village Opera has two Facebook pages with 1,200 fans. They're on My Space, of course, and their soaring electric guitar riffs can be heard on various websites and YouTube. Their album "Olde School" was nominated for a Grammy last year. Somebody is listening.

On Friday, they will be appearing at The State Theater in New Brunswick, wrapping up a North American tour.

Ross is convinced that if the 18th and 19th centuries had amps and subwoofers, the great operatic composers would have been rocking the house. After all, he notes, Verdi was accused in his day of being melodramatic and scandalous, both on and off stage. Mozart, no choirboy himself, embraced the bigger sound of the newly invented pianoforte, and composers of all stripes went wild when the Industrial Revolution gave pianos more adrenaline with steel strings and iron casting.

East Village Opera is among a daring few who stake their claim to the idea that opera can be remade in exciting new ways that blend both idioms without pandering.

These include The Wooster Group, which is taking the baroque opera La Didone on a wild ride into flights of visual and musical fantasy through April 26 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

Wooster has brought together superb young singers of the early music repertoire and paired this little known work with the Mario Bava 1960s cult sci fi movie "Terrore Nello Spazio," adding synthesizers and wailing guitars alongside the harpsichord and other traditional instruments. The effect is mesmerizing.

Ross and Kiesewalter were living in their native Ottawa, Canada, when they stumbled upon the opera/rock idea eight years ago while working on a film. They refined it after moving to New York and recruiting singer AnnMarie Milazzo. They grew into an 11-piece band, having added two guitarists, a bassist, a percussionist and a string quartet.

"Peter was scoring some incidental music based on traditional Italian art music," recalls Ross, who by then had built a stage career, appearing in the Canadian production of "Tommy" and in "Miss Saigon" on Broadway.

"We had so much fun that we decided to work on it a little more on our own. We did a CD press of 500 copies, put it out into the world, and it's been quite a ride.

"Since neither of us comes from a background where we feel chained to a musical tradition, we just let the songs themselves dictate the style they should go in.

"We think the orchestra was probably Puccini and Verdi and Wagner's best attempt to creating a rock band without having the ability to amplify. We're pretty convinced of it because those guys were boundary pushers in their time, finding new instruments, looking for influences from abroad and pushing the envelope. They were the rebels of their time. They would do anything necessary to reach the crowd."

Ross shrugs off ascribing any lofty mission to East Village Opera Company's endeavors.

"A lot of people saddle us with an unintended role of crossing over and creating bridges between art forms. That was never our intention. It's always been a self-serving project, which is why it is surprising to us that it sprouted wings and took flight."